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Ventrue
Ventrue Those you can't deny "There's no need to struggle, it's already over." “Let’s make this interesting,” she says. She tells you all the heinous things you are about to do. You laugh in her face. Ridiculous. Then, one by one, all of your limbs betray you. You see everything. You see it all through the socket windows of your Judas body. You try, and fail, to scream through the frozen smile fracturing your face. Something dead approaches. It moves with the calm of someone who already knows the outcome. It stalks as bold as a revenant lion. Bullets and threats slide off its skin, raindrops on obsidian. Eyes like the tinted windows of a luxury car, mouth like an iron maiden, smile like a blood-stained crown. Those tinted windows roll down. Its words violate you. You’ll put that gun to your head if it asks. Its voice is full of chains and meathooks. You dance like a marionette, as it leads with all the grace of storybook nobility. In obeisance and despair you realize Prince Charming is Bluebeard. The Ventrue are rulers, yes, but more than that they’re winners. They’re the best and the darkest, the lords and generals of the night. They don’t ask, they take. You start, they finish. They come, they see, they crush. History is written by the victors, and the Lords are always writing. Just ask. They love their histories. They will tell you how the blood of deities and kings distilled into Vitae in the cradles of civilization. They will speak of Troy — of the lares and mares, the household gods and lingering shades of the dead who protect the noble families. They will teach you how to read between the lines of the epic poem, the Aeneid. They will show you how Aeneas vs. Achilles is a metaphor for the Man vs. the Beast. They will speak of their divine inheritance: the five-fold aegis and the mastery of men and animals. Flip the pages and watch a parade of triumphant cadavers marching down the centuries. Eternity is a banquet held in their honor — wassail! wassail! — and the wine, that is the life, is ever flowing. See the raggedy king. He wears a crown of barbed wire and a patchwork coat of many colors. The park is his kingdom. Beggars, buskers, and animals all bow to him. The living statue, the pickpocket, the stray cats, the raccoons, they all make up his court. He knights some of the street folk, with a vermiculated blade, before giving them a bent chalice of his blood which he calls “the grail.” There are some who think him mad. His subjects do not. See the big boss. Meeting the man himself is a tedious ritual. You have to know a guy who knows a guy. You have to get past goon after goon. There is a hidden smoke-filled room, past several other smoke-filled rooms, a nasty nesting doll of power. There he is. Broad shoulders form a power-house V in that pinstripe power suit. You tremble as you step forward, kiss his emerald ring. He is the apex and the fulcrum. All the city is his pendulum. City aldermen, criminals, Christ…everyone spends time in his pocket. He flushes red as he talks, and you shiver. In awe, you barely notice the little old woman, sitting as still as death in the corner — the one he looks to before giving every opinion and answer. See the guru. She has a warm smile and manic enthusiasm. Her infomercials haunt the night. She has a line of self-help books. Her voice hypnotizes countless people through her self-actualizing CDs. They follow her on all the social websites. The product really works. She builds fortresses of confidence within her followers. But that fortress erodes and crumbles if they spend any time away from her influence. Dependence can sound like self-reliance, if you spin it right. They need more. They fork over cash to go to her seminars. They learn how to sell her products. Her influence spreads like a happy epidemic. Waves and waves of the herd, all conditioned before they even meet her. Their blood is enriched and seasoned with a special balance of nutrients she sells to them. See the director. In the black box theatre, he is God. It begins with the desperate actors lining up for auditions. His approval means the world. He commands them. He gets inside, tinkers with their clockwork. He manipulates scenery and people, weaves them all together to form a vision, manifesting fantasy as reality. Night after night, and his Kindred ask him why he wastes his time when there are more important games to be played. He smiles and says, “Practice makes perfect.” And they cannot deny the power of his voice and gaze, over that of the city’s more serious dead. Let the other clans toil and trouble. The Lords shall exalt. Carpe noctem! Why you want to be us Oh, come on. You’ve never wanted to run the show? You’ve never wanted to go into a conflict knowing you’ll come out on top? Of course you have; and as a Ventrue, you will. Why you should fear us The Gangrel might chase you down, but the Ventrue walks calmly towards you, shrugging off your pathetic attempts to hurt him. No weapon or words will stop him, but his quiet voice will freeze you where you stand. He’s going to get what he wants, and it doesn’t matter who gets hurt, because it won’t be him. Why we should fear ourselves What if no one could say no to you? Maybe it would feel great at first. For many of the Ventrue, it does. They command their lessers, and are unquestioned. But what resentments lurk behind those mesmerized eyes? Again, better to be feared than loved…but what if the Ventrue are just despised? Clan Origins • Cronos swallowed his children. They in turn gnawed their way out of his belly, and that brief eternity of darkness and viscera stained their grace. Their descendants measure the path to power in mouthfuls of gore. They patiently raze all obstacles, all enemies, one bite at a time. • Marauding Gangrel tore through Eastern Europe. Some of their number broke away from the packs to settle down and become masters of men. They abandoned the mutable flesh and discovered the Lordly Tongue. Some say these alphas evolved to a more sophisticated forest. Others say the Lords are a weak offshoot of the Savages, little brother choking on a razorwire noose of repression. • The Camarilla fell, but its last scions walk the world still. Each is a marble monument to something lost, something on the tip of the welling blood tide of the family’s communal memory. There are unread secrets written in their blood. Time-capsuled histories, messages in bottles, they stride across the centuries. • Once upon a midnight darkly, the owls and ravens of the forest found a hero and guided him deep into the nighted woods, to the place where lay a snowy-skinned princess. The charming prince knelt to awaken the beauty with a kiss but found her lips cadaver cold, and she did not stir. The woodland birds sang, and the prince felt a strange desire opening in his breast like a nocturnal flower. He took her upon the stone. At the height of the cacophony and the passion, the cold princess jostled awake, laughing like broken glass shaken in a velvet bag, eyes like yellow lamps. And all the scions of the charming prince inherit the gifts he received that night — majestically ever after. How to Make a Monster Domination comes in many flavors. A Ventrue might achieve it through Physical, Mental, or Social Attributes and Skills. Players may pick any category as their character’s primary. Choose any of the three, and then decide how that works as your path to power. Does your Ventrue character take control through calculated displays of brawn? Perhaps your Lord rules out in the open with her presence, or by pulling the strings from the shadows as an ingenious mastermind. The Ventrue approve of excellence in all of its forms. They give the Embrace to members of old-money families and self-made successes alike. They also Embrace professionals at the tops of their respective fields. The signature Lordly Discipline of Dominate suggests Intelligence, Expression, and Subterfuge. A young vampire styling herself a Lord over beasts as well as people with Animalism will want Manipulation and Animal Ken to start. Breeding matters to the Lords. The Dynasty Membership Merit becomes important. Players can work with the Storyteller to create a memorable dead family to give the weight of history and long shadows to cast over the character. Merits such as Contacts, Status, and Resources are common to the clan. These may have been acquired in life or after. Like any other vampire, the Ventrue might Embrace a prince or a pauper, but the Blood has an illimitable inertia that pushes that vampire towards influence, no matter how humble his origins. Appearance varies widely amongst the Lords. Many dress for success in high contrasting colors and power angles. Those who wore uniforms in life often carry them over into death, deriving what authority the garments carry. For some Ventrue, the first declaration of power is the physical appearance that others first see. The first impression is vital. However, there are other Ventrue who hide their power behind ordinary, even homely appearances. They rule behind anonymity. They turn their vanities inward and are able to subsist entirely on the self-satisfaction squeezed from the smiles they give themselves in private. Nickname Lords Stereotypes • Daeva: Forever is wasted on those trapped in the tunnel of immediate gratification. • Gangrel: We are the monarchs of lesser beasts, we do not become them. • Mekhet: “Knowledge is power,” he sneered to me. So I made him sing everything he knew to me in falsetto. • Nosferatu: If fear is your only tool, then every problem starts screaming. Clan Bane (The Aloof Curse): Excellence breeds contempt. When people are puppets for your will and buildings are play pieces on a grand game board, it is hard not to become distant. It is so very easy for you to become detached from those people, places, and things that keep the Man secure in your breast. apply his first Touchstone to his seventh dot of Humanity. This means his first Humanity loss will also detach that Touchstone as the bane takes effect. Favored Attributes Presence or Resolve Disciplines Animalism, Dominate, Resilience In the Covenants The Carthians: The Ventrue win. Victory is sweeter than blood. And what game is more engrossing than taking on the house? Some Lords join the Revolution more for the challenge than for ideological fervor. Firebrands who value the Lord’s input know the difference between succeeding and just vomiting ethos. Being a champion of the masses can be addictive. The Circle of the Crone: Lords of men and beasts, some Ventrue expand their mastery of the world by bending occult forces to their will. Becoming one with the dark earth, they make themselves into witch-kings and witch-queens. The Lords like to connect their Blood to deities, and some find this urge satisfied by becoming avatars of the Crone and all of her many faces. The Invictus: There are those, handicapped by an over reliance on stereotypes, who say the Invictus is the covenant designed for the Ventrue. They would not be wrong. All the best qualities of the Lord’s Blood are highlighted and encouraged by the First Estate. Who so elementally manifests the ideals of the Invictus? Who else is Manifest Destiny made flesh and fang? The Lancea et Sanctum: Some Ventrue know that their inherent superiority comes at a price. They must guide their lesser cousins. How better than as spiritual authorities? No, don’t thank us. The work is reward enough. Some Sanctified Ventrue have an iron-clad faith in a higher power. And some more jaded Lords believe the only higher power is themselves. These latter still find value in the Second Estate, for the clergy of any society are a sure path to power. Who else is so like the Almighty, so as to better understand His will? The Ordo Dracul: For creatures so well equipped and so driven to master the world around them, it must be infuriating for the Ventrue to have so little control over their Beasts, banes, and the Curse within. How can you rule others if you cannot rule your own Curse? Some Ventrue join the Order and study their mystical arts with a frightening obsession. Step by step, they take praxis over their vampire bodies, just as they would take over a city, block by block. Also, Dracula is something of a hero to many young Lords. Who else among the dead has won out so completely? Common Bloodlines Architects of the Monolith, Gorgons, Nahualli